Transitioning a Client

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Hi, I’m Dr. Roger Hall and this is “Roger’s 2 Cents.”

In this video blog, I answer questions people have given me in sealed envelopes, answer them on, open them, and answer them on camera, unedited, uncensored. And if it’s really awful, you’ll never see this video. Here we go. Here’s the question.

I’d like Roger’s 2 cents on this question.

How do I avoid the feeling of abandonment when I begin to transition clients to another team member?

So this is coming from a person who it seems like they’re talking about a work issue and I don’t know if they’re talking about their feelings of abandonment or their client’s feelings of abandonment, but I think in a professional setting, if you need to transition one client from yourself to another person on your team for any number of reasons, it’s important that you start with a “preview of coming attractions.”

Part of the sense of abandonment and is related to a sense of grief that your clients may be feeling. And grief in my definition, is a combination of two things.

One, it’s the loss of the familiar.

And the second is the loss of hopes, dreams, and expectations.

So I’d encourage you to, to give people that you’re going to transition and advance warning. I mean, you’d never go to a movie if you didn’t have any expectation about what was coming. And we like previews of coming attractions because they help us prepare for what’s coming up. So the first thing to do is let a person know well in advance that it may be necessary and probably desirable that they work with somebody else. That will help them over the course of your meetings. Again, to prepare themselves for that transition. The second is when you do it, it’s important to tell them the truth.

Here’s the reason why I’m doing it. Here’s why I think you’re going to gain greater benefit and be aware that it’s the loss of the familiar and the loss of their hopes, dreams, and expectations. So in working with you, they may have had expectations that they would work with you until they, you know, until you retired or they would work with you for a certain number of years. But if you’ve transitioned them, I’m sure there is a reason. Help them to create great expectations for their next person that they’ll be working with. Help them imagine good hopes, good expectations with the person they’re working with next. And then the last thing is to avoid that sense of the loss of familiar. It’s bringing in your associate and working with them in tandem for a while as you begin to hand them off.

So three things:

Number one, give them advanced warning, a preview of coming attractions.

Number two, help them once they know that there’ll be transitioned to a new a new service provider. Help them know that they can have hopes, dreams, and expectations with that new person and help them come up with those expectations.

And the last is work together with the person with whom you’re to whom you’re going to transfer them. That way they can become familiar with a new person and then the transition is not so difficult.

And that’s Roger’s 2 Cents.